Mars

[Lettucepray]

Having discussion with my ds (16). He thinks the current situation and potential colonize Mars is awesome......I really dont! In fact it makes me want to puke....all that money and resources spent while we have homelessness and crippling poverty and misery for so many. What do you think??

Do you remember the old science videos we were forced to watch in school? They all said we’d be living on the moon by 2000.
It’s just fantasy nonsense, not remotely achievable in the near future.

I know! He's arguing that this will benefit society and is worth the money. I actually think it will happen in the next 50 - 100 yrs....it's a question of 'should' we?.

It won't happen anytime soon...think about it, there's no oxygen there, they would need special building built with oxygen and gravity pumped in just so people could breathe and walk around,..and it's hardly the type of atmosphere for growing food, so they would need some kind of greenhouse build that's adapted to the atmosphere there....then the water may not be safe to drink of there is water there, so that would require water cleaning and treatment plant built there again, then there would need to be homes, schools, hospitals, shops (otherwise how would people get supplies) vehicles for getting around on the planet as I imagine everyone isn't going to live in the same area, they will want to spread out?

I don't see it happening anytime soon, it's a bit too far fetched,

It's not government money that was spent on the recent rocket launch, it was Elon Musk's money. Do you get equally sickened by other millionaires/billionaires who don't spend their money on resolving poverty?

At least Space X is employing people, paying suppliers and so on. Elon Musk could just hoard his money and spend it only on himself. There will be scientific developments that come from the work done on the Space X programme as well.

Colonising Mars with a self sustaining colony is far away. But a moon base is not, and then perhaps a Mars base for research and development is not much further away.

Your son sounds very intelligent and forward thinking. If we don’t get off this planet humans will die. The lot of them. And in the not too distant future.

This thread is only short but it has addressed your concerns so do have a read: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/3161395-why-has-elon-musk-fired-his-tesla-to-mars

So, as already mentioned we have crippling poverty and inequality. We haven't fully explored THIS planet, there are still indigenous people's not yet discovered. We can't even look after the planet we have, greenhouse gases, plastic, etc but yet it's still deemed acceptable for some that spending such colossal amounts on future human endeavors really sticks in my throat.

So, if we can’t even look after this planet best find another one, eh?

It's natural for a young person to be attracted to such a plan, and older people to be more cynical. The plan doesn't sound feasible to me. Look how long it took to make a single space station, just a few hundred miles up in spce